A Risk Worth Taking. Brynn Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ out of warmth and sleep. With fumbling fingers, she set the phone to vibrate, blinking fast to force her eyes to adjust. Damn, she should have practiced her evacuation at night. The first engine muted. A car door clicked open. Her breath skittered as she stumbled uphill, looking over her shoulder. Her security lights burst on, flooding the courtyard and driveway, and setting her phone shaking again. A big black SUV had pulled up in the turning bay, headlights doused. Four darkly clad figures silently fanned out, their arms locked straight and pointed downward. Handguns. An identical vehicle pulled up alongside, leaving one more engine approaching. More people spilled out. Her phone kept vibrating. Or was that just her hand?

      A crack, a smash—wood, and glass. Hooves thundered, shaking the earth, the cows’ glow-in-the-dark flanks flashing past. Hell, they wouldn’t stampede her, would they? Between their flying bodies she made out the figures of two men down at the French doors, looking like they were pulling up from a shoulder charge. White-blond hair gleamed from one guy’s head. He braced for another go. She upped her pace but her foot shot into a hole. Her ankle buckled, pain flashing through it, and she sprawled onto the grass, her cry muffled by a crash as the door gave. She pushed herself up and tested the ankle. Just a strain. Cold dew coated her leg. Focus on what’s right in front. Small steps. If she didn’t capitalize on her scant head start, she was—what? Dead? Despite her efforts to make the cottage look deserted and as pristine as if a cleaner had just left, the goons might feel her body heat in the small bedroom. If they pulled back the covers, they’d discover the sheets were warm...

      Her chest pinched. The world tipped, and she planted her feet wide. No. Not now. She squeezed her eyes tight. Don’t do this to me, Brain. I know we’re in danger. Small steps, okay? One foot. Another foot. Another.

      Fighting for every breath, she reached the fence to the olive grove, squeezed between the wires and scraped through the trees. Below, they’d switched on one set of headlights, aimed outward. Another set clicked on, directed into the field she’d just left. The cows bolted again.

      Yep, use those lights, people. They’d be blind to anything outside the reach of the beams.

      She pitched forward, groping in her coat pocket for the Fiat key. It rasped as it went in the lock. She eased the door open. The interior light flicked on. Shit. She scrabbled to disable it, panting. She threw the backpack on the passenger seat and her butt on the driver’s seat. Her hand shook as she jabbed the key at the ignition. Come on, come on. After a few wild misses, it slid in.

      She froze. Oh God, she couldn’t start the car—they’d hear it. She covered her nose and mouth with both hands, which only amplified her struggling, squeaking breath. Her airways felt like they were narrowing. No. Why screw this up for yourself? Her assailants had to be fanning out. They’d find her in minutes. Her phone was still vibrating. She snatched it from her pocket and switched off the alarm. She was well alarmed.

      She stilled, staring at the screen. She forced her trembling hands to navigate the unlock pattern. The Bluetooth signal was faint but it might be just enough. Lights zigzagged across her vision as she scrolled her playlist.

      “I Knew You Were Waiting.”

      “She Works Hard for the Money.”

      “Because the Night.”

      No, no, no, no.

      Oh. She paused, scrolled back up a few tracks. Yes.

      Swiping quickly, she hooked into the cottage speakers, slid them to full volume and pressed Play. From downhill, a snare drum hammered. She tapped along on the steering wheel—eight quick counts—and shakily started the engine as the drum and bass guitar joined, followed by the rhythm.

      She automatically went for the headlights, stopping herself a second short of stupidity, and navigated out of the rutted driveway and onto the road, eyes open so wide they hurt. Joan Jett launched into her lyrics, echoed by half a dozen ghostly Joans glancing off the surrounding hills, half a second off the beat. The connection would cut out at the end of the track. Two minutes and fifty-five seconds. One song. One chance.

      “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” the hillsides sang.

      “So do I, Joan,” Samira muttered. “But now what do we do?”

      After a couple of minutes of driving, the tinny phone speaker kicked in, as the next song on the playlist uploaded. Out of range. The cottage would have silenced. Advantage over. Was it enough? She was in the next valley, so the car sound would be difficult to pinpoint. No movement or lights in the rear-vision mirror, and her preplanned escape route had enough twists and turns they couldn’t easily track her. First chance she got, she’d contact Tess, nail down a new plan.

      “Time Has Come Today,” squeaked out of the phone.

      Indeed. Time to come out of hiding and end this, whether she liked it or not—and she definitely did not. But Hyland had just made her decision for her.

      “Yes, Joan,” Samira said, swinging into a side road. “The time has come.”

       CHAPTER TWO

      London

      IT WASN’T PARANOIA. Samira was being followed. A tall, brittle man with crisp blond hair fading to white. Jeans, a brown leather jacket, a burgundy overnight bag. The guy who’d shoulder-charged the French doors the night before last?

      In Paris that morning he’d been one of the few other patrons at the café two blocks from the Gare du Nord, apparently engrossed in the weekend Le Monde. At the station, she’d bought her ticket to London minutes before the cutoff for the 8:13 a.m. train—but as she’d crossed the concourse she’d glanced back to see him scurrying into the Eurostar ticket office. If he had time to read the newspaper and drink a café latte, why wait until the last moment? She should have kept walking, waited for the next train, aborted the whole lunatic mission. Midway through the Channel tunnel, he’d strolled into her carriage and slipped into a vacant aisle seat three rows behind. He’d hung back as the train emptied at St Pancras and lingered among the seats, tapping on a phone. She’d ducked into the bathroom, willing him to disappear, hissing to her sunken-eyed mirror image that she was being irrational. More than one man in Europe had white-blond hair. When she emerged, he was still there.

      Now he was trailing her down the travellator to border control. Coincidence? She dragged her tongue over her teeth. She didn’t do coincidences anymore.

      She looked around for a clock. Tess and Flynn should be waiting at Pancras Square near the station, after landing at Heathrow overnight, as they’d hurriedly planned. Very soon, if the passport worked, Samira could sponge off their confidence. Just having people to talk to would be a novelty, if she was even capable of carrying a conversation.

      After the hushed voices and hum of the train, the station boomed with white noise that filled the air like a gas, curving up to its soaring glass dome and sweeping back down. Pearly light hung in the air. As she pulled up at the back of the immigration queue, she adjusted the plastic shopping bag on her shoulder. Inside, the polystyrene-wrapped champagne bottles whispered and clunked. Somewhere among the thick-coated passengers a newborn baby yelled, long beyond the reach of comfort, its shuddering mews swelling, ebbing, swelling, ebbing. Her blood pressure was playing that song, too.

      She tightened her scarf and pulled her necklace over top of it, fingering the small gold cross. The queue was moving slower than she’d bargained for. There СКАЧАТЬ